


Broken. Bitter.

by Vrunka



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, I'm probably too drunk to be tagging this, Jack got way messed up in the explosion, M/M, Trans Male Character, okay, reuninon fic, sad dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 16:24:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11444595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: Sometimes the darkness speaks to him.





	Broken. Bitter.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rile/gifts).



> Commission for the wonderful reaperchan on Tumblr! Thank you so much!!! I had so much fun writing this!

Sometimes the darkness speaks to him.

"Jack," it says. "Jack, Jack, Jack."

He knows, of course, that it is not really talking to him. Not saying his name in the dark of the night, collected in the corners, pulsing. He knows, of course, that it does not truly sound like his lover, his long dead lover.

He knows.

But he listens anyway. As he stares at the ceiling that he can no longer quite see as sharply as he used to.

"Jack," it says. "Jack."

And in the morning it will feel like a dream. And Soldier 76 will barely remember it. And when Ana asks him, in her astute way if everything is okay; Soldier will answer yes. Of course.

Everything is fine.

He picks at the sandwich that he only vaguely remembers her leaving. Her silhouette in the light of the fridge, fuzzy at the edges. Her hands touching his face, frowning, turning him for inspection in the low light.

"You're losing weight," she had told him, this visit, the last visit, the time before that. "It's not good for you, Jack."

It's not good for him.

He eats the sandwich she had left, wrapped in plastic, lonely on the shelf full of condiments. His name in her looping script, written on a post-it-note and stuck to the top.

Corned beef and bleeding tomatoes. Too dry bread. He scrunches the wrapper up, leaves it sitting on the table in front of the television that only pulls in three channels. Cooking channel, gameshows and news.

He flips it to the gameshows.

He doesn't watch the news anymore. He doesn't like the things it shows.

The darkness only talks to him when he is alone. It reminds him of his past, it accuses him of things. Melts down the walls and puddles at his feet. It whispers his name while a contestant on Date An Omnic screams about winning ten thousand dollars.

Soldier stares at the television.

He looks down at the murky, vibrating darkness.

That he is going mad is just a small tick of distress. Something that does not ultimately matter.

"You're ignoring me," the darkness says. Forming a mouth which floats upon the surface of it. Brown lips, a shade of pink to them. Soldier recognizes them. He hates that he does.

"Jackie boy."

76 hates the nickname, always has. Gabe stopped calling him that when he found out. Gabe had kissed him between the shoulder blades and had run a hand over the scars under Jack's pecs and Gabe stopped calling him that.

Soldier 76 swallows.

He looks away from the darkness and back to the tv. Someone has left trash on the table, crumpled plastic wrap. It's catches the light from the television and turns purple and gold and white.

His hips hurt.

He settles deeper into the chair, despite it. The Omnic dating show ends, another show starts. Soldier misses the title, dozing, not really paying attention.

He is an old man.

He has done everything he can.

He wakes up from a nap. There is drool on his chin. The television is off. The screen is dark. He doesn't remember doing it but he probably did. He stands up.

The mechanical joint that cradles his knee clicks. He rubs at it distractedly.

Someone is standing in his kitchen.

The instincts that will never quite fully leave him begin to kick in. Best plans of attack, ambush, weaknesses.

And then Ana turns around.

Soldier shudders. He sits down. The rush of adrenaline makes him light headed. It didn't used to do that, in the old SEP days the only worry was how the serum-enhanced rush would interact with the HRT. He places his head in his hands.

Ana approaches. She touches the arm of the chair. The clean lines of her fingernails are a detail lost in the smooth arc of her fingers. Soldier needs glasses, though he will never admit it.

"Okay, Jack?"

He takes a breath. "I...wasn't expecting you. It was...you surprised me, is all."

"You didn't sleep there all night did you?"

"I...may have. I dunno."

Ana sighs. "I came to bring you some hotdogs. Something to use those eight bottles of ketchup on."

Eight bottles of ketchup, lined up on a shelf in his fridge. Eight unnecessary bottles like soldiers in a row.

"Did you take your medicine today?"

"Not yet."

"Are you sure?"

Her coddling annoys him. He glares at her. "Pretty sure," he snaps. "Yeah."

It isn't fair of course, she doesn't deserve his anger, no matter how much her pestering bothers him. He knows she doesn't. He knows that she is just trying to help him. Trying desperately to help him. He can see it, murky on her face when she stands close.

Worry and desperation make her look older than she should. But then Soldier remembers that she is older. They both are.

Eight bottles of ketchup and three packages of pads.

The darkness between his feet wriggles and teases for his attention.

He does not ask if she can see it. He is afraid of her answer, either way. He accepts when she hands him the pills from the dispensary holder.

Yellow, blue and blue today. Soldier really doesn't remember whether it is that combination every day or not. He takes the pills. Finishes them off with the glass of water that she hands him.

"Winston was asking after you," Ana says, once Soldier has swallowed and showed her under his tongue.

"Did you tell him I'm fine? That I don't need the pity? He wasn't talking about coming to find me was he?"

Ana swallows, Soldier can just hear the wet working of her throat. Her fingers curling against her chest. "No, Jack," she says. "No one is coming to find you."

"Good."

Ana looks away. In the fuzzy expanse of her face, her eyes are narrowed. She doesn't say anything more as she leaves. She just goes, and Soldier is thankful for it.

The darkness flexes.

"Jack," it says. "Everyone already knows you're here," it says. "They left you here to die," it says.

"I'm not dead yet," Soldier tells it.

"But you are dying," the darkness says. "Jack. Jack, I miss you. Will you invite me in, Jack? Let me come home."

"Gabriel is dead," Soldier says. "Fuck you."

The darkness shrivels and flinches and lies still.

Soldier stands, shuffles into the kitchen. He steps around the darkness as he goes, though something vicious in him wants to stomp it, kick it, rip it to shreds with his aching, clawed hands.

He finds a pack of hotdogs in the fridge. His name on a post-it-note across the top of them, stuck at an angle. No buns, but it's good enough.

Soldier dumps the meat into a pot of water. He turns the stove on.

He talks to Gabriel.

He doesn't deserve to, but he does anyway. He talks about Ana. About the old days. Golden days. Gabriel doesn't respond, of course, why would he? Jack did nothing in his life but fail him.

Soldier returns to his chair.

The darkness is gone.

He looks around, slowly, assessing. It was in his mind, all of it, the whole time. Must have been. Made no sense anyway.

Something slithers behind the television. Flickers with unreality.

Soldier squints.

The shadow of a man, flat, non-dimensional, pulls himself along the cracked apartment wall. Passes over the faded, peeling paint, the blisters, the stains.

Soldier stares.

Something is seeping. Bleeding from the wall where the shadow is. Forming, impossibly, into reality. 

Legs, thick-thighed, leather-clad. A fluttering jacket and arms. And a chest. And a mask.

Silver and luminous.

Soldier stares.

There are no windows in his apartment, he has no idea when it is. He could be asleep right now. This could be a dream. But his prosthetic itches where it meets his skin, and his hips hurt and his breathing hurts and usually, in his dreams, he is spared that at least.

"Jack," the figure says. His voice is grinding, distracting. Too many voices speaking at once, trying and failing at harmony.

Soldier frowns. His fingers twitch. "There is no Jack here," he says.

The masked man's head cocks. Unreadable behind that skull mask, the cowl, the coat. A thin noise, a leak of air, a faucet left running, coils out from behind the mask. Reedy. High pitched.

Soldier realizes only after it has ended that it was laughter.

"No Jack here," the man drawls. "You son of a bitch."

"If you're here to kill me, you may as well know that Overwatch doesn't care. They've left me here to die anyway."

"So I'd be doing you a favor then," the man says. One of the voices, one of the growling, rolling tones is too terribly familiar.

Soldier is not scared of this man, but he is scared of that part of this man. He is not scared of the shotgun that seems to melt into the man's hands from nothing. He is not scared of when it presses against his skull.

The smoke detector begins to scream.

Soldier flinches. The gun pulls away from his head.

The alarm blares. A woman's voice overlaid with the high pitched beeping.

"Fire," she says, economically. "Fire. Fire. Fire."

"What the fuck?" The masked man steps back. Head swiveling like an owl's, scanning.

Soldier is doing the same. Something on fire, someone saving him? Something in the kitchen is smoking, a steady, billowing stream of black-grey. A cloud of it.

"Fire," the smoke detector woman says. "Fire. Fire."

"Get her to shut up," the masked man says. His body is pulsing with every blaring beep, buzzing visibly. Soldier's eyes, playing a trick on him.

Soldier shrugs. "Don't know how."

The man sighs. The gun shakes in his grip. He points toward the smoke alarm and fires.

Plastic and wires rain down. Shards of her innards. Buckshot.

The beeping ceases. The woman's voice curdles, dies. The smoke still curls up from the pot on the stove in the kitchen. Thickening the more they stare at it.

"What's in there," the masked man demands. The shotgun presses against Soldier's cheek, forces his head slightly to the side.

What is in there? Soldier does not remember? Something Ana left perhaps. Dinner for him? Lunch for him? Something she had told him about and now he has forgotten?

"I don't," Soldier says. His voice wavers. He hardens it. "I don't remember."

"You don't remember?"

"Must have been something that...that someone left."

"Only person who comes in here to tend to your sorry ass is Ana," the masked man hisses. "Get up, go open it."

Get up.

Soldier feels his knee, the bad one, twitch. His hips protest. Sitting is so much nicer. Standing, what can standing do for them? He is ashamed as he pulls himself up, creaking and cracking and groaning.

He is ashamed of how old he has become.

He is ashamed to be so weak in front of this punk.

The shotgun hangs down at the man's side; watching, mute, as Soldier steadies himself, and Soldier is ashamed of that as well. Ashamed of the pity he is getting, even from an enemy.

He hobbles into the kitchen. His knee screeching with every step like something in need of oil. The ball joint out of place, aligned incorrectly.

"Jack," the masked man says. Quietly. Gabriel's voice again. "Jack, Jack."

It rakes at Soldier's belly, digs low in his gut. Eviscerates him.

"Fuck you," he says, pointing at the masked man. "You don't get to sound like him." He overturns the pot on the stove, burns himself, his fingers catching on the hot metal.

The burner has been left on.

Soldier turns it off. Sucks on his fingers while he empties the pot. Charred strips of something. Caramelized meat stuck to the bottom.

Disgusted, he turns from it.

"Did you do that," he accuses.

The masked man seems to take a breath. The masked man seems unsure.

"Why would I do that, Jack?"

"Don't call me Jack."

"Morrison, then? Strike Commander? Sir?"

"Go away."

"I came here to kill you. Personally. I want to see you die," the masked man says in Gabriel's voice. The vicious way they had gotten with one another in those months before the Swiss explosion. "I wouldn't have tried to set a fire in this tin box Overwatch has you locked up in."

"What?"

76 can practically hear the masked man sneer. The dramatic tilt of his head, the stiffening of his shoulders. "You really don't know where you are?"

Gabriel again.

Soft and hurt.

"Stop sounding like him. Gabriel is dead."

"He is," the voices from behind the mask say. "And he isn't," Gabriel's own voice says. "You never even asked what they fucking did to me."

Soldier swallows. He licks his lips, again, again. They are too dry. Chafing against each other. "There was no body. I looked."

Bleeding from the temples, shaking and dragging himself along the ground. Blood in his eyes, in his mouth, hands covered in it. Legs. Legs not. He hadn't been able to move them. Dead weight behind him, dragging.

But he had searched.

And eventually passed out.

And then Ana had found him.

Everything from after even his own frantic, clawing search, is sort of a blur. If he squints, parts will surface from the fog of it--a nail torn off, his leg spasming, Ana taking him...somewhere getting him fitted into a hip brace--but he cannot focus on the picture as a whole.

"Bullshit," the masked man says. "You walked away from that explosion and you never looked back."

"I didn't..."

The masked man lifts his hands. And he is masked no more.

His face...is not Gabe's, not exactly. Features too wax-like, bubbling. Shifting. Running across the plane of his skull like water. Occasionally an eye will be Gabe's. Or the lips. The shell of an ear.

Not Gabriel.

But undeniably Gabriel.

Soldier goes to sit. He cannot get up on the counter, his arms are shaking too bad. He turns away and leans against it. His knees knock against the wood, loudly.

"Can't bear to look at it? I don't blame you. It's hideous, right? Inhuman, what they've done."

"I don't--that's--"

"Nanobots. Golden girl got a little too cocky, little too sure of herself. You remember the express ban order on using her nanotechnology as long term revival? Miss that two minute window and the opportunity is gone. Guess she missed the fucking memo."

It answers a question Soldier had not been trying to ask. He shakes his head. Forces himself to look back.

He can feel something, lodged in his throat. Grief. He had not allowed himself to grieve before. His arms are still jittering. He cannot hold himself any longer. His hips are a screaming, delirious ache.

He tries to lower himself to the floor, tries to be graceful about it. It doesn't work. He collapses in a heap. But he doesn't look away from the thing Gabriel has become.

And because he doesn't look away, he doesn't have the luxury of missing the pity and disgust that flickers across Gabe's new monstrous features. Deserved. Soldier is ashamed, although he knows he deserves it.

He closes his eyes.

The emotions bubbling in his chest long to escape, the rip and tear at the insides of his eyelids. Trying to burrow out through his ribs and spill and bleed between them.

Grief and pity and sorrow and happiness. Happiness. Gabriel, after all this time, is alive. Mostly. Monstrous and tortured, perhaps, but...but alive. And aware.

It's the happiness, out of place and perverted, that leaves 76 paralyzed.

Almost numb.

When he opens his eyes Gabriel is staring at him.

"I thought maybe you had a stroke," he says, mildly.

Soldier shakes his head. "No. I'm...I don't know what to say."

Gabriel's eyes blink. There are too many of them, skittering across his face like spiders. Glittering irises like carapaces. "I'm not sure now what I really wanted you to say."

"What?"

"You're pathetic." The words could hurt more than they do. The tone is...sad. Almost regretful. Not as sharp and as cutting as it could be. "I thought I was...coming here to kill the former Strike Commander of Overwatch and I find a..."

"Corpse?"

"Worse than that. What happened to you, Jack?"

"Jack died," Soldier says. "He died when Gabriel died."

"I don't believe you tried to find me. You're lying," Gabriel says. A hint desperate. Those other tones and voices overriding his own clear, tenor. "They told me you walked away without a scratch. That I needed to...that I could make you pay for what had been done."

"You came to kill me?" Soldier asks.

Gabriel blinks. He looks away. His chest heaves, too fast for breathing. Vibrating like he is coming apart. He holds a hand out. The sharp, clawed gloves shine in the fluorescent lighting.

Soldier takes the hand.

What's the worst that can happen?

Gabriel pulls him to his feet effortlessly. Allows 76 to sag against him while he gets his footing. His hips complain with every movement. His knee joint pops and clicks.

"You became an old man on me," Gabriel says. "Thought the serum was supposed to prevent this sort of thing."

"Does anyone know? All the scientists are long since dead." Soldier allows Gabriel to lead him, they do not stop at the chair he so often sleeps in, they bypass it and enter the room that Ana has furnished as a bedroom.

A cot, a trunk, a closet.

Jack has nothing in any of them. The bed is covered by a sheet and nothing else.

"You really are living like a dead man."

"I didn't see much point in it, I guess."

"You don't get to be sappy at me," Gabriel hisses. His flesh is ashy, charred, going grey and necrotic in places. And then the nanobots keeping him together vibrate and his features shift again.

Soldier sits on the edge of the bed. Gabriel's hands keep him from falling over himself, losing his balance while he lowers himself to that hard, uncomfortable cot.

Soldier remembers old times. Maybe not better times, but happier, at least. Fully alive, at least.

He remembers what Gabe's lips felt like. On his own lips, on his belly, on his clit. Gabe praising him and praising him; always making sure he felt so good and so whole and so real.

Gabriel now, the thing he has become, doesn't even have lips.

But the thoughts still roll over in the pit of Soldier's stomach and feelings he had packed away for forever are slipping their bonds.

He lifts his arms when Gabriel taps them; pretends the way Gabe lifts his shirt up and off doesn't make his breathing speed up the way it does. The black material is dropped to the floor. Gabriel is pushing Soldier down onto the bed.

Efficient.

Putting the old man to bed.

Gabriel's eyes do not linger on the scars, the old ones, the new ones, the shiny, puckered flesh. He is either ignoring, or unaware of the sudden strange shift in the mood.

"I've missed you," Soldier says. Although it is unfair, cruel to both of them. He holds Gabriel's forearm, squeezes. He can feel the nanobots beneath the skin, the buzzing hum of them creating a new and terrible pulse. "I thought you were dead and I--"

"Wanted to be dead yourself. The Jack I knew wasn't a coward like that. The Jack I knew would have kept fighting. I'm not going to kill you, old man, you aren't worth it."

"Gabriel--"

"Don't call me that." The voice is not Gabriel's. It is that horrible messy chorus. "I'm Reaper now. I've been Reaper for a long time."

"The Grim Reaper refusing to kill, that's a new one."

The humor, the lightness in Soldier's tone surprises both of them. Reaper blinks. He pulls his arm out from Soldier's grip. But he doesn't run like he could. He lingers. His eyes scan over 76's face.

"I don't deserve to explain myself," Soldier says. "But I'd...I'm sorry. For everything before."

"Sorry and it's all fixed?"

"It's not. Nothing can undo this. I thought maybe if I...my death could. That slow decay would...be poetic somehow. To kill myself was a cop out. I woul-wouldn't let you down like that."

Reaper steps forward. His claws slide over Soldier's cheeks. Across his lips. Over the scars.

"I thought this was all you walked away with. A scratch across the Golden Boy's perfect reputation. Just a fucking scratch. I should have known Overwatch was hiding you for a reason. Shoulda known it was more than that."

"Overwatch doesn't want me," Soldier says. "No one has even looked for me."

Reaper's eyes tighten, one set is Gabriel's down near his chin. His skin seems to slither and crawl. He shakes his head.

"Jack," he says. "How did this happen to you? You're what...fifty-six? Fifty-five?"

Twenty years dissolved away from the two of them. Stolen. Soldier looks away, he lays back in the pillows. Reaper's hands slide down to Soldier's throat. The claws briefly, wonderfully, tighten. His palms are against Soldier's throat, pressing down against his windpipe.

Surprising and sudden.

And devoid of the hate 76 expects.

The hands squeeze and Soldier blinks and shudders, but he doesn't fight and Reaper's arms are shaking, his fingers are slipping, his face is as close to Gabe's as Soldier has seen it.

His hands drop away.

Reaper collapses against Soldier. Falls into him.

He is not crying. Soldier isn't even sure if he has the ability to cry. He is shaking, though, his body heaving with sobs that are not sobs. 

Soldier lifts a hand. He lays it against Reaper's head, the boiling, rippling skin of his skull. He closes his eyes.

They lay there for a long while.

Soldier breathes. His fingers move gently. Tracing the new pockmarks and scars. The new ashy, grafted skin. He wonders if Reaper's knees ache, he knows his own would be, at that angle for so long.

But Reaper isn't even breathing against him. Reaper is as still and as quiet as death.

"Do you remember," Soldier begins to say.

Reaper moves, he pushes away. He doesn't have legs, just churning, billowy darkness where his legs would be.

"I don't remember anything," he says. "I'm not Gabriel."

"Okay. But you aren't going to kill me."

Reaper recoils. His fingers twitch. "I want to kill you." But his voice is shaking. Trembling.

"You were never this nervous before. Intimacy wasn't--"

"Shut up! Just shut up, Jack!"

But Soldier cannot.

He remembers the last time, just before the explosion. Remembers Gabe beneath him, the color of the dildo against Gabe's ass, the expanse of Gabe's back, sweat slick, panting. His skin --

Trembling.

His skin trembling.

And Jack had teased him then. Even though things between them were already turning sour.

His skin is trembling now.

But Soldier does not want to tease him.

"Gabriel," he says. "You do know that I loved you right?"

"Fuck you, Jack."

Soldier licks his lips. He reaches out. Reaper does not pull away, or flinch or evaporate. Soldier pulls him closer by the wrists, until Reaper is on the bed again. Kneeling on it. The thin mattress dips beneath his weight. His eyes are firmly shut. His head is smoke. His neck is ash.

Hiding like a child.

Afraid to hear it.

Maybe that's unfair, Soldier cannot pretend to understand what Reaper has gone through at the hands of...of whoever did this.

Overwatch.

Or Angela.

It doesn't matter in the end.

"I love you now. I never stopped loving you," Soldier says.

He is sitting up as he says it. Closing the distance between them. Reaper has a face when Soldier's lips catch him. A mouth like a wound, Gabriel's nose, pure black eyes.

Soldier holds him close, fingers moving to touch Reaper's neck. The flesh is cool, cooler than his head had been. The muscles beneath the skin seem to react to Soldier's touch. Nanobots bumping against Soldier's palm. Trying to escape, trying to get closer, Soldier isn't sure.

Reaper shudders. His own hand, claws and all, rake through Soldier's hair.

"Jack," he is saying. "Jack, Jack.

"I didn't want to miss you, you bastard," he is saying. "Oh Jack, oh Jack."

He forms lips, they move against Soldier's, when he pulls away his face is Gabe's again. His weight sags into Soldier. His head burrows in the crook of Soldier's neck.

And maybe it isn't real.

Maybe Soldier 76's mind has just finally snapped.

Soldier closes his eyes.

He doesn't care. 

He is happy, for the moment. Happier than he has been in a long, long time.

\--  
Sometimes, the darkness speaks to him.

"Jack," it says. "Jack. Jack. Jack."

And Soldier turns. And he smiles.

And he welcomes it home.

***  
Five months later:

"You don't trust me," Jack says. He isn't pouting, Jack doesn't pout as a general rule, but it's a close thing. He looks away from Ana.

She is frowning. "It's not that, Jack," she says. "I'm happy for you. Such marked improvement is...is stunning. But I..." Her hands move. Relocate to her hips. "I want to make sure you are okay."

"I'm okay. I'm doing fine."

And it's true. He still takes the medicine she gives him, his hips still ache and complain in the prosthetic cradle, he still can't really see all that well.

But he is doing better.

Gabriel, as twisted as the vision of him has become, is helping to bring Jack back. Make Jack care again.

It's helping.

And Jack won't betray him again, not even for Ana, for her peace of mind.

She seems to realize this after a few beats of silence pass between the two of them. She rolls her eye.

"Fine," she says, throwing up her hands. "Keep your secrets, Jack. I'll be back tomorrow around the same time."

He nods, smiles at her. Clearly still ruffled, flustered and frustrated, she leaves.

The darkness drops down the walls to fill her absence. Gabriel Reyes, masked and threatening, steps into existence. Looking toward the front door of Jack's tiny apartment.

"I thought she'd never leave," he says in his rolling growl of a voice.

Jack half grins as Gabriel's darkness spreads around him. These small displays of comfort, of Gabriel's ridiculous new powers, made Jack nervous at first. Made Gabe nervous too, it seemed.

His skin more like rubber, nanobots attempting mimic human form, ashy in color, too dry in places.

It had taken almost a month to get Gabriel to spend the night in his bed. Another solid week of coddling and careful touches before he could get Gabe to shed that terrible jacket, the heavy rayon undershirt.

Parts of him like liquid, parts of him like a corpse. A cloud. Indefinite.

Jack loves him all the same.

Monstrous or not.

They lay together now, on Jack's tiny cot, Gabriel's head on Jack's chest. He doesn't breath.

Another detail that has taken getting used to.

Another fact that when analyzed too closely becomes terrifying.

Jack strokes his fingers down Gabriel's back. Feeling the soft places. Remembering the old times.

He shifts his hips, slightly uncomfortable with the heat that pools in his stomach when he thinks about past times like these. Back before the fall.

He's an old man now. The lust part of this was supposed to be over and done with.

Gabriel's hand clutches his hip. Jack has kept his sweatpants on.

They both have their insecurities.

"What are you thinking about, Jack?" Gabriel teases. Lifting his head enough to meet Jack's gaze. His face is a stranger's, not quite formed into Gabe. But Jack doesn't care. It's inside that counts. "Your breathing has sped up."

Has it? Jack hadn't noticed. He closes his eyes. His fingers twitch against Gabe's back.

Gabriel's fingers catch on the sweatpants. Slipping beneath the elastic.

"May I?"

The monster, asking permission. So soft and so gentle even now when there shouldn't be a place for it between them. Jack appreciates it, loves it; he licks his lips, nods.

Gabriel's fingers are cool. Each has its own pulse. Jack can feel them as they trace over the hypersensitive skin just above the prosthetic, where all the nerves were rewired into the metal and plastic of the cradle.

"When did this happen?"

"The explosion," Jack says. Staring up at the ceiling and not where Reaper's fingers are mapping the new, non-organic territory. "I was...trying to find you and I...my. I didn't know why I couldn't--"

He's babbling. He can feel it. Bubbling behind his ribs. Gabe's head leans against his chest. He has lips, too many lips, multiple mouths, they brush across the surface, the scars, Jack's nipples.

"Shhh," a mouth soothes as another nips the soft skin between his pecs. "I understand, Jack. We've discussed this."

More or less.

They will always circle back to it.

Gabe's body is like liquid, warm and pliable as he rolls his full weight over Jack's legs.

Jack shudders and moans, but he does not stop him as Gabe undoes the clips that keep his legs attached. There is the momentary disorientation as the nerves disconnect and go numb, but Gabe's mouth (mouths, there are still so many, two of them sucking at the skin and a third, wriggling tongue still circling a nipple) is a good distraction.

Feelings he had forgotten he was even capable of roll down his spine as Gabe's body grinds down against his. His arms pushing against the stumps of Jack's thighs, keeping them out of the way as he fills the space between them.

He is still wearing his pants. It doesn't take much before the leather is slick, soaked from Jack's leaking.

They have not talked about this.

In the five months back they have not discussed it. They haven't needed it. Their relationship was always about more than sex anyway.

But if Gabe is willing, ready, not shying away from his own body, from what he has become, what Jack has become; then Jack is more than willing as well.

"Jack," a mouth on Gabe's neck says, in Gabe's voice. Another rumbles his name from Gabe's stomach.

"Your cock is so wet for me, Jack," Gabe says. From his own mouth, situated where it should be, on a face that has finally settled as the one Jack remembers. Gabe's fingers roll against Jack's clit, quick motions. Jarring.

Shocking.

Jack arches. Head tipped back.

"Even like this," Gabe asks, his drawl amused even though he is not smiling, "even like this you want me?"

Jack bites his lip. His chest heaves. The constant aching of his aging body is instead morphed into a more productive sort of ache.

One he hasn't felt in a long, long time. Building and building into--

"God, Gabe," he gasps. "Yes. I want you. As you are. Always. It's...it doesn't matter. I love you...Gabriel."

Gabe's fingers twist, one final time. His hips jerking and spasming and he falls bodily onto Jack. Jack's breath leaves his lungs in a rush.

Gabe is still and silent above him.

More weight than in the old days. Strange for how...un-alive he has become. Jack lets his eyes slipped closed.

He doesn't think about it.

Eventually, Gabe twitches. Rolls.

He lands next to Jack. Still curling up to him. Clinging just a little bit.

"Sorry," he says.

"For what?"

Gabe shrugs. The motion is stilted, smothered by Jack's side and his shoulders.

"I lost myself for a minute there, I think," Gabe says.

"I could tell. You good now?"

"I'm good now."

They breathe. Together. Jack's hand returns to Gabe's spine, soothing up and down the expanse of it.

"We're good now?" Jack asks. Although he probably shouldn't.

Gabe swallows. Sighs. The air from his mouth is cool, surprisingly so. "Yeah," he says, "we've been...good for a while."

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me at:
> 
> https://vrunkawrites.tumblr.com


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